RING 3X
GK: Hello?
SS: Duane, it's your mother --
GK: Yeah. Hi, Mom.
SS: Duane---- Where are you? I drove by the house ---- lights out ----- newspapers all over the lawn-----
GK: I'm in San Francisco, Mom.
SS: Well, for heaven't sake. Couldn't you say something when you go out of town? What are you doing out there?
GK: Came out to visit some friends, Mom.
SS: Well, who?
GK: Friends. Don't worry about it.
SS: "Don't worry." Duane, my life is worry. I wake up with worry every morning. And then I go in your house to make sure you didn't leave the gas on and there is your computer, and you are still trying to write that dreadful novel about matricide----
GK: It's not about matricide, Mom. It's about the side of a mattress.
SS: Whatever. It's so dark, honey. So violent.
GK: I don't recall asking you to read it, Mom.
SS: Well, I let myself in to water the plants and there it was.
GK: You go into my computer?
SS: Honey, I need to know these things.
GK: But it's my computer----
SS: Honey, who is going to look after you if I don't? I just ask you that. Who is going to make sure you don't go off the deep end?
GK: How did you know my password?
SS: Duane, I am a mother, I have known your password since you were born. Anyway, who's the friend out there?
GK: Her name is Jessie, she's a park ranger at the Grateful Dead National Historic Site in Haight-Ashbury.
SS: This is a real historic site?
GK: It's an old ballroom where they played in the Sixties. It still smells of weed.
SS: And she's a park ranger?
GK: She wears a special sort of tie-dye uniform and her hair sticks straight up and she sings some of their songs.
SS: How do you know her?
GK: Facebook. We're friends of the Dead.
SS: That doesn't sound good. So? And------?
GK: And what?
SS: That's what I'm asking. And what???
GK: She's a friend. A friend friend.
SS: You went all that way out there to visit a friend friend?
GK: I like it out here.
SS: Well, I wish you'd be friends with someone other than the Dead. Your aunt Susie just got her twelfth grandchild. A little girl. She is so happy. The kid is two months old and already ---- hundreds of photographs. She pulls out her phone ----- she's got videos, pictures ---- me, I've got pictures of my geraniums.
GK: So was there something you called about, Mom?
SS: "Was there something you called about"------ yes, I called to make sure you were alive. Okay?
GK: How's Dad?
SS: Well, he went to turn off a circuit breaker in the basement and he got a terrible shock and now we're sitting here in the dark.
GK: Is he alright?
SS: He's fine. Just had to change his pants and now he's lying down for awhile.
GK: You don't think you should call a doctor?
SS: If I called a doctor every time he wet his pants, we'd have a permanent medical staff on duty. No---- I think it was good for him. Got his heart beating a little faster. (OFF) Hank! (TR MUMBLES) Duane's in San Francisco. He wants to say hi, dear. (TR MUMBLES) (SS, ON) Here he is, Duane --
TR: (SINGS) Where little cable cars go halfway to the stars.....
GK: Dad? You ok? You don't sound right.
TR: And different strokes for different folks
I am everyday people
GK: Dad, I think you should call your cardiologist---- Dad --
TR: Take another little piece of my heart now, baby!
Break another little bit of my heart now, darling, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Have another little piece of my heart now, baby,
GK: Dad. I'm worried.
TR: We gotta live together!
GK: Alright, Dad. Just . . .take care of yourself.
TR: (LOUDER) One pill makes you larger
And one pill makes you small
And the ones that mother gives you
Don't do anything at all
SS: (OFF) Hank, give me the phone and go lie down. (ON) Duane?
GK: Mom? I never heard Dad sing before.
SS: Yeah, well, a major electrical shock'll do that to you. So what is San Francisco like? Huh? Is it beautiful?
GK: You haven't been here?
SS: Of course not. We almost went. Back in 1967. Your dad wanted to put flowers in his hair. We had it all arranged. You were six months old. And then when I handed you over to my mother to spend the week, you got big tears in your eyes, and I told, Hank, I said, Hank, I can't leave my boy. I am his world. I can't go to San Francisco and go sashaying around in bell-bottoms and fringe vest and smoke marijuana and all of that. What if I should get high on pills or something and whip off my shirt and go dancing topless in the park at some Be-In Happening sort of thing and somebody took a picture and years from now, when my Duane is grown up, someone publishes that picture of his mother? I could not live with myself, Duane. So I didn't go. (WEEPY) I never had a wild youth. Because I love you too much. That's why. (SOBS)
GK: Mom-----
SS NOSE BLOW
GK: Mom, I'm coming home on Monday.
SS: Only if you want to. Don't do it for me, Duane.
GK: I want to.
SS: Love you, honey.
GK: Love you, too, Mom.
SS: Bye, now.
GK: Bye, Mom.